Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, has commenced the upgrade of Airport Road lighting with Smart Light Emitting Diode (Smart LED) lights.
The upgrade is to actualise the vision of a greater FCT that will complement the ongoing massive infrastructural development.
The project, awarded by the FCT Administration, is meant to replace the conventional High-Pressure Sodium (HPS) at the capital’s exit and entry points with Smart LED to make the nation’s capital a 21st-century city like other developed.
Coordinator of Abuja Metropolitan Management Council (AMMC), Felix Obuah, said there were plans to migrate all major Abuja roads and streets to intelligent LED.
He said the contract had already been awarded and would be taken in bits.
“We are ready to light up Abuja,” he said.
Obuah had, last week, decried the attitude of some streetlight contractors that failed to meet standards, threatening to blacklist them.
However, in a statement, yesterday, an Executive Director of Tejaff Multi-Concept Limited, Mrs Ronke Ozoh, said one of the features of the LED lighting system was the use of significantly lower energy to produce the same amount of luminosity.
The company in charge of the project, Concrete Thinking Limited, recently commenced the replacement of the HPS with the Smart LED.
Thousands of Smart LED units will be replaced from the Airport Road area to the central area of the FCT to give it the befitting look of the smart city.
Ozoh, who visited the site last week, noted that LED lighting would result in a reduction of up to 60 per cent of the operation and maintenance costs of streetlight infrastructure.
According to her, a smart LED streetlight system is one of the enabling technologies for a smart city, adding that the intelligent nature of this street lighting system enables remote management of streetlight assets.
“The intelligent LED can give the exact amount of energy consumed. It can be detected from a central control unit if any of the bulbs is faulty. It will also help inaccurate energy consumption bills from electricity companies,” she said.
An Abuja resident, Lennox Adigwe, was quoted in the statement to have urged the Minister of the FCT to graciously extend it to other parts of the nation’s capital.
